


Under the Impossible Lights

by Conifer



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is bad at things, Cecil doesn't care, Fluff, M/M, Water that is pink that is not pink, spoilers for one year later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:18:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Conifer/pseuds/Conifer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos can never say that Night Vale never scares him out of his mind. He cannot even say that it occasionally scares him out of his mind. Because it doesn’t. Night Vale scares him a lot. All of the time, if he was to be honest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Impossible Lights

**Author's Note:**

> While not my first fanfic, this is my first Night Vale fic, if it can be considered that. It's really just an amalgamation of words. But, you know. I figured I'd upload it. Also, titles are awful things to come up with when it's like, one in the morning. Yes. I have wonderful priorities.

Carlos can never say that Night Vale never scares him out of his mind. He cannot even say that it occasionally scares him out of his mind. Because it doesn't. Night Vale scares him a lot. All of the time, if he was to be honest, though after the first month and a half he...kind of got used to it. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but he kind of likes it. It’s not a terrifying sort of fear, though it probably should be. (He’s chosen to ignore this fact after its initial realization.) It’s exciting and wonderful and thrilling, like the sort of fear one gets from seeing a horror movie (which, slightly ironically, he’s always been terrified of,). It’s a safe fear.

Until, at least, his near-death experience at the bowling alley. 

He wasn’t scared until after. Not properly scared, at least. He wasn’t scared as the tiny people began to fire at him, he wasn’t scared when he felt himself falling, he wasn’t scared as he felt himself slipping out of consciousness. It was the voice cracking over the radio that scared him. Cecil - Cecil, who seemed so...put together. Cecil, who was so kind, who put up with his flustered phone calls in the middle of the night because he’s a bit of a workaholic and he needs someone to explain to him why all of the water has turned the color of pink lemonade but somehow was not pink - he never figured that one out. (“I’m not calling for personal reasons, Cecil,” he would manage and then regret it even when Cecil responded brightly and cheerfully and in a way that was so very Cecil,) and Cecil who might have scared him just as much as the rest of the town at first. He had a right to be spooked, though. He had met the man maybe once, and there he was, waxing rhapsodic about Carlos to the entire town. It was a little bit frightening. He had thought it was a joke, that the whole town was in on.  
But then he heard him break over the radio - the usually professional voice that offered reassurances cracking with held-back tears that would eventually come anyways. There was no joke in this genuine, uncontrollable emotion.

And this _terrified Carlos._

The idea that someone actually cared for him enough to break down sobbing on the radio when they thought that he was dead - that was terrifying. He was not used to people caring for him like that. He was never good with relationships and he might have ruined this one before it ever properly began and the thought of this was far more frightening than he ever thought Night Vale would be. 

He could never claim to be good with words. He wasn't, not really. He could string them together into sentences that described the scientific properties of an element but he could not make them obey his thoughts, could never get an idea across like Cecil could.  
But in the parking lot of the Arby’s as the lights danced overhead, he hoped that he pulled them together.

Sometimes things seem so strange, or malevolent, and then you find that, underneath, it was something else altogether. Something pure, and innocent, He said, and the man who had curled himself against Carlos like there was no where else in the world where he should be nodded, and they both understood, though understood differently.

_Night Vale._ Cecil knew.

_Cecil._ Carlos meant.


End file.
